Is Facebook really starting to slide?

 

Gallery

By Barry Collins

Posted on 22 Feb 2008 at 09:00

The number of UK visitors to Facebook has fallen for the first time, according to new research.

The social networking phenomenon saw its visitor numbers slide by 5% between December and January - the first dip after 17 consecutive months of sometimes stratospheric growth.

The site still has 8.5 million users and remains the UK's most visited social network, according to the figures from Nielsen NetRating's panel.

So is it the beginning of the end for the most talked about site of 2007 or is there a logical explanation for the slight fall in visitors?

One simple reason for the drop off could be that more and more companies are barring employees from visiting the site. A survey from last August claimed that eight out of ten firms with internet filters are blocking the site.

With December being the month where employees spend more time at home than usual, the drop off may simply be reflecting people's opportunity to access the site.

"Just as one swallow doesn't make a summer, so one month of falling audiences doesn't spell the decline of Facebook or social networking," Nielsen's analyst, Alex Burmaster, tells The Daily Telegraph.

Click here to join PC Pro on Facebook